1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to templates for use in building construction to facilitate locating and spacing of construction members that are erected at repetitive spacing; for instance for establishing locations and spacing of wall studding along sill plates.
2. Prior Art and Other Considerations
Customarily, standardized sizes for building construction members and standardized spacings of such members are utilized in costruction of buildings. For example, standardized lumber sizes and relative spacings are employed in frame construction, as is well known in the art. Various measuring devices, such as tape measures, rulers, etc. have been employed to measure, lay out, and mark upon construction members locations for fastening of other members thereto.
Such layout procedures involve reading-off and measuring from graduated and numerically marked measuring devices and almost invariably involve fractional dimensions (for instance, fractions of an inch) that have to be applied cumulatively. Reading or arithmetic mistakes are easily made, and such errors are likely to have rather grave consequences, since these errors are usually cumulative. As it is often customary in such building construction work that relatively unskilled persons are employed therefor and because it is not uncommon that this work is performed by more or less analphabetic people, the likelihood of the occurance of such errors is much increased. It will be appreciated that undue and often excessive costs are caused by such errors due to the need for rebuilding.
Some of these difficulties have been recognized in the art and various attempts to alleviate them have been employed, albeit with inadequate success. Layout, supervision, and inspection by appropriately skilled persons have been costly alternatives. Appropriate specialized alphanumerically marked gradations and markings on measuring tapes and rulers have also been applied, yet this has often caused confusion and errors due to the need to discern specific readings among a plurality of markings and among measuring scale gradations. Furthermore, as design information is customarily provided on building construction plans in terms of center distances for construction members, establishment of spacings between such members offers additional opportunities for errors to occur, while usually relatively coarse thickness tolerances for construction lumber add to the difficulties even further. The cumulative nature of any such errors naturally aggravates caused problems.
Among the measures disclosed in the art to alleviate such difficulties are, for instance, carpenter's lay-off tapes disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. DES. 259,706 and DES. 260,738 issued to Smith. Smith shows measuring tapes having conventional scales graudated in inches and fractions thereof, having appropriate numerical markings, and also being provided with blocked off areas at various repetitive center distances that correspond to standardized stud spacings employed in building construction. Center distances are alphanumerically marked.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,301,596 to Sedlock discloses a stud tape measure that has two conventional scales, wherein, at the beginning end of the tape, the first scale starts at zero inches and the second scale starts with a dimension corresponding to one half the thickness of a respective stud. Alphanumeric markings indicate repetitive centers at standardized distances upon one scale and stud locations (and widths) are indicated by bold graduations and alphanumeric markings on the other scale.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,351,113 issued to Eggertsen et al discloses an adhesively backed disposable measuring tape having customary scales with numerical markings.
German Patent Application Publication DE 3529958A1by Karlsberg discloses an adhesive tape measure that is reinforced and that is imprinted with measuring scales which may include signs and symbols.
The adhesive template tape according to principles of the present invention is intended to obviate the hereinabove indicated difficulties. Accordingly, a primary object of the invention is the provision of an adhesive template tape including longitudinally equidistantly spaced, visually contrasting fields of identical longitudinal extents for laying out and establishing of building construction member locations without a need for reading of alphanumeric symbols and scales, and without the need for calculations, however simple. Thus the template tape of the invention expressly avoids scale gradations and alphanumeric markings.